<?php
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 * Copyright © 2016 Alex Yst <mailto:copyright@y.st>
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$xhtml = array(
	'<{title}>' => 'Cricket fixed their system! (They fixed the part that used to give one a gratis month of data service, anyway.)',
	'takedown' => '2017-11-01',
	'<{body}>' => <<<END
<p>
	Current countdowns:
</p>
<ul>
	<li>20 unfinished weblog entries in <a href="/en/weblog/2016/07-July/">July</a></li>
	<li>29 days until mobile service ends and I renew on a tablet plan</li>
	<li>27 days until my old domain registrar can no longer counter my charge dispute</li>
</ul>
<p>
	My Cricket service ended today.
	Cricket fixed their system! There&apos;s no gratis month of service, this time.
	I halfway anticipated this though, and had warned my family last night that there was a chance that the Wi-Fi hotspot would quit working.
	I pulled out my T-Mobile $a[SIM] card and used it to activate the new service.
	Today being Tuesday, I tried to get a T-Mobile account set up so that I could get some of the gratis stuff that T-Mobile&apos;s partners give away every week.
	However, the account registration page just kept silently failing.
	It wouldn&apos;t allow me to create an account! It&apos;s strange that account creation is separate from setting up a line.
	Why would you set up the line, then <strong>*later*</strong> set up the account? I talked to a T-Mobile support representative, and they said that after setting up a line of service, one must wait at least seventy-two hours before they can set up the account.
	No T-Mobile Tuesday for me this week.
	Wondering what I was missing out on, I took a look at what this week&apos;s givaways were.
	As it turns out, today was a good Tuesday to miss.
	The offers today are flesh to eat, a proprietary video rental, and an ostensibly fossil-fuel-burning ride.
	Not a single one of these offers are something that I&apos;d actually make use of! I&apos;ll wait the requisite seventy-two hours, then hope for better options next week.
</p>
<p>
	With the line of service in place, the next thing to take care of was the arbitration opt-out.
	T-Mobile requires that all disputes between them and customers be handled via arbitration or small claims court.
	That is, unless the customer has <a href="https://www.t-mobiledisputeresolution.com/">opted out within thirty days of setting up their line of service</a>.
	Do I anticipate that I&apos;ll have a problem with T-Mobile and need to take them to a larger court? No, not really.
	To not opt out now while I still can though is to surrender the freedom to take them to larger court if needed later though.
	I&apos;ve opted out, and my confirmation number is <a href="https://www.t-mobiledisputeresolution.com/ThankYou.aspx?id=HQNMWAOS">HQNMWAOS</a>.
</p>
<p>
	Some company that I&apos;ve never heard of, Vegan Gangster, is <a href="https://twitter.com/vegan_gangster/status/778297387366420480">having a giveaway today</a>.
	Anyone is able to place an order for a gratis button, complete with gratis shipping.
	I&apos;m not sure what they&apos;re about, but the company is ostensibly vegan, so probably worth advertising for.
	I should probably look into that they do before wearing my new button when it arrives though.
</p>
<p>
	I was looking at some T-Mobile information, and found that T-Mobile has a referral program for postpaid customers, but not prepaid customers.
	Prepaid customers are given no incentive to refer customers.
	T-Mobile really does appreciate prepaid customers less than postpaid customers.
	I&apos;m not sure what&apos;s up with all the discrimination, but prepaid customers also are not able to receive a piece of T-Mobile stock when they port their telephone number in, while postpaid customers are.
	I still prefer T-Mobile over the only other available $a[GSM] carrier in the area, but it&apos;d be nice if they weren&apos;t showing favoritism toward one group of customers over the other.
</p>
<p>
	I touched up my $a[EFF] essay, then wrote my essay on exam proctors.
	With the essays done, I moved on to my discussion posts:
</p>
<blockquote>
<p>
	How you go about trying to improve your grammar probably depends on how fluent you are in a given language, as well as what resources that you have available to you.
	In English, I work on improving my grammar through simple, everyday conversations.
	Some of the people that I hang out with are better at using proper grammar than I am, so they point out my mistakes.
	One of my most common mistakes is to fail to properly use gerunds &lt;https://en.wikipedia.org./wiki/Gerund&gt;.
</p>
<p>
	If you don&apos;t know the language well enough to hold conversations or if you don&apos;t know any speakers of the language, there are online tools that can help.
	For example, I&apos;m in the process of learning Esperanto, and the online language-learning tool that I use &lt;https://www.duolingo.com./&gt; marks my answers wrong or &quot;almost correct&quot; if I use poor grammar.
</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>
	Yeah, peer assessing helps you learn to assess yourself.
	By looking for quality in the work of others, you learn what quality looks like, so you can better assess whether your work has it.
</p>
<p>
	Yes, double blindness is anonymity, but in both directions.
	Neither the assessor nor the assessee knows who the other is.
	I believe that double blindness is very useful in promoting a fair assessment.
	Assuming that you have perfectly honest people assessors, it might not be necessary, but people have a tendency to favor their friends.
	If the assessor isn&apos;t anonymous, they might give better grades than they normally would as well, to try not to upset the assessee.
	You also have people that might negatively rate things based on stupid things such as racism and sexism.
	Double blindness makes it harder to judge people in unfair ways.
</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>
	I hadn&apos;t thought about it, but you&apos;re right.
	Reasonable grammar isn&apos;t the only thing needed to convey one&apos;s ideas.
	Unless ideas are expressed clearly enough, grammar and ideas won&apos;t even matter.
</p>
<p>
	Yeah, sometimes someone will cite past undocumented learning within an assignment.
	I&apos;m not sure what the best way to handle that would be.
	If the student honestly did learn from a relative or friend, it makes sense to cite them, but it&apos;s difficult because they didn&apos;t cite a verifiable source.
	I&apos;d recommend that people find extra sources to back their work if they can.
</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>
	I agree, learning a language is difficult.
	I&apos;m currently in the process of learning Esperanto, which is supposed to be one of the easiest languages to pick up, and it&apos;s still a bit difficult.
	English, however, is well known for being one of the most difficult languages to learn because of how broken the language is.
</p>
<p>
	Respect is also an important trait to show, in an academic environment, in a workplace, and almost everywhere else.
	You&apos;re right, it&apos;s not about agreeing with everyone else about everything, it&apos;s about politely hearing them out and providing feedback in a civil manner.
</p>
<p>
	Greek and Roman history would probably be one of the easier subjects to assess, if you ask me.
	History courses aren&apos;t about learning assessable skills, and are more about memorizing assessable knowledge.
	A multiple choice test would be the simplest and easiest to grade option, though an essay question would likely provide a better insight into how much the student had learned.
</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>
	I agree that poor grammar can be quite a bit of a distraction.
	In a best-case situation, it can be a mild annoyance that makes the writer look uneducated.
	In a worst-case scenario, it can instead obfuscate the ideas expressed entirely, so you can&apos;t tell what message the author wants to convey or you have to reread several times before you understand.
	However, because this course isn&apos;t located in a specific country, I&apos;d try to be a bit lenient as far as English grammar is concerned.
	Many people here probably aren&apos;t native English speakers, and they probably have very good grammar in their own primary languages.
	English is one of the most broken and difficult languages to learn.
</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>
	I agree, globalization is imperfect, though it&apos;s not due to a fault in globalization itself.
	It&apos;s because we, as people, are imperfect.
	Globalization could be purely positive if it weren&apos;t for our own greed and lack of caring for others.
	I agree, the United Nations should definitely look into this further and try to fix problems as best that they can.
	Hopefully as globalization continues, we&apos;ll manage to work out most of the problems.
</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>
	Looking at something as large and with as much impact as globalization from a short-term perspective would certainly be a mistake! I fear though that too many of the people in power, such as those running large corporations, tend to look at things in a very short-sighted and selfish way.
</p>
<p>
	Exposure to new ideas is one of the great things about globalization though.
	People from all countries are able to see how other countries operate and what their own countries are doing wrong.
	I hope that this spurs people to try to fix their countries from the inside so that we can all be on equal footing one day.
	Exposing countries that could use some outside help also might get them the help that they need.
</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>
	That&apos;s exactly how I feel.
	The ethics (or lack of ethics) of the people in charge of insuring that human rights aren&apos;t violated play a major role in whether these rights are actually upheld.
	The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund don&apos;t seem to have the ethics needed to see this through.
	If not outright disbanded, these organizations need to undergo major reform.
	Otherwise, human rights violations will continue while these two organizations just look the other way.
</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>
	It&apos;s hard to say if we&apos;d be where we are today without the United Nations.
	They have, after all, become a bit corrupt.
	While the World Bank and International Monetary Fund wreck havoc on the world though, it seems that the United Nations might mostly be a force for positive change.
	At least, that&apos;s what I&apos;d like to hope.
</p>
</blockquote>
<p>
	I was planning to grade essays today as well, but decided to put it off until tomorrow.
	It&apos;s the last thing that I have left to do this week anyway, assuming that I don&apos;t do any more revising on my essays.
	Why rush when I&apos;m so close to finishing?
</p>
<p>
	As I was heading off to bed, I received an email from Google.
	They&apos;ve locked me out of my account again! They already showed me last time that when they lock me out, they&apos;ll refuse to allow me back in, even if I provide them will all the correct information.
	I&apos;m at a loss as to what to do.
	I need a Web-based account that my mother can use to reach me via telephone number, and Google Voice seems to be the only working option that I can find.
	Furthermore, the whole point of this account is to provide a stable telephone number for my mother, as I will continue switching between mobile plans to get the best value.
	I won&apos;t always even have a telephone number, as is the case with my FreedomPop plan and some tablet plans, but when I do have a telephone number, it often changes, and that&apos;s not going to change any time soon.
	All of the hassle aside, if I have to keep creating new Google accounts because Google keeps locking them up for no good reason, my telephone number is going to be even <strong>*less*</strong> stable than if I used my sometimes carrier-provided telephone number, not more stable! Google VOice clearly isn&apos;t the solution to my dilemma, so I&apos;ll need to keep looking.
</p>
END
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